


Caught Me Looking Through Your Eyes

by whetstone



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: AU, M/M, Second person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-08 23:16:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetstone/pseuds/whetstone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A "real life" AU. Seunghyun's a mechanic, Jiyong's a college kid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caught Me Looking Through Your Eyes

In the morning you sit on the stoop and smoke your way through a cup of coffee, Jiyong splay-legged behind you. His knees are against your hips, his cheek underneath the back of your neck.

"You smell good," he says, and you know that's a lie because you worked the night shift. You're in your coveralls, motor oil caking the spaces underneath your fingernails, but you grin around the filter anyway. Jiyong frames your mouth with his fingers, feeling around for your smile before he pulls the cigarette away. He ashes it before taking a drag, smoke pluming past your ear. "You do," he insists. "Sweat, work. People smells. It lets me know you're alive."

When you snort he fits his hands over your chest, adding, "that's why I like feeling you breathe." Sometimes he sleeps with his head on your stomach.

"Stop being dramatic."

He shrugs, thumbs tapping idly against your shirt. The dandelions in the yard ebb and sway.

 

In the shower he slides in behind you and wipes shampoo from your eyes, grabbing at your face before he kisses you, warm and easy. "Your lips are chapped," you say, and he scrubs at them with the heel of his hand before he leans in again. You fuck him against the tiles, water raining in bullets against your back.

In the bedroom he curls up on your side of the mattress, his wet blond hair flung against his face, hand buried underneath your Han Solo pillow.

\---

When people ask for your getting-together story later, you will lie. Sometimes it's mutual friends. Other times it's the grocery store, the gas station, spilling beer on the other at a bar.

He'd actually stopped at the shop with a flat tire. You'd hunkered underneath his fancy sports car (who didn't know how to change a tire, anyway?) and got to work. After ten minutes he'd leaned down, hands in his pockets, and said hello. As the blood rushed to his head you'd learned his life story. He'd bought you a burrito from the Mexican place next door after accidentally kicking oil into your face.

That night he helped you finish your beans and rice, followed you into your bedroom and stayed there.

You call it a coincidence. He insists it's fate.

\---

Jiyong stays over every weekend. You don't ask what he does the rest of the time but his fancy leather bag strains with all the books he carries around. Sometimes he takes phone calls about midterms and finals, things like that, so by the time he tells you about his school you can mostly follow along.

 

"I want to be a dentist."

"No one wants to be a dentist."

"I do. I have to get my teeth fixed first, though."

When he smiles you kiss him, grazing his crooked front tooth with your lower lip. "If you get braces, don't come over anymore."

"Only with me for my looks?"

"Your mouth," you correct, and he pulls away from you to laugh, hand flying up to cover his face.

\---

When winter comes you kick snow from the front path. Waiting for the bus is hell. Jiyong gets you a ridiculous hat made of fur. It's got these sides that dangle down to cover your ears, so you rarely wear it even though he says these kinds of things are fashionable right now.

Sometimes when you're watching the traffic fly by you think of Jiyong's shoes. They're never the same ones and they're never dirty. You think maybe you'd be that way too, if you could afford it. One time you drag a gray pair through the slushy mud near the trash cans. When he asks you say you were snow shoveling, that it was an accident.

 

At night your breath makes clouds. You lug out the space heater on Fridays and hide it away on Sundays, but only if Jiyong complains. When he doesn't he sleeps practically on top of you and uses it as an excuse.

One day he says, "tell me something about yourself."

"What do you want to know?"

"I don't know." Jiyong's shirtless in the artificial heat. His hair is red today. "Why can't you tell me?"

"I can't think of anything to say." You shrug.

He lifts his chin from your chest. "Just talk to me."

"I could talk but I wouldn't really be saying anything."

Jiyong doesn't come over the next weekend. After three more pass you figure it's over.

\---

He calls you on a Wednesday, when you're hanging up your last shirt.

"Where are you?"

"My room. What's up?"

The phone crackles with his breath. Then he mumbles, "I'm at your house. You're not here."

"I moved."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You stopped coming."

"You could've called me," he blurts out. "You should've told me you were moving, what the fuck."

You take the bus to your old house. He's in his car, the engine idling. You end up in the backseat with his teeth on your neck and his cock in your ass. He drives you back to your new place. When he slips against the weeds poking up from the snow you hold him steady, pulling him up by the button of his fly.

When you wake up the pillows smell like his cologne and he's spooned around you, heavy and warm.

\---

Jiyong starts inviting you to things. Pizza night at his place, coffee at Starbucks.

"The bus doesn't run that late," you lie, and he nods, chewing at his lip.

"I can come pick you up."

"It's like an hour out of the way."

"I don't mind."

 

One night you find yourself in a crowded room full of laptops, lattes in antique cups and iPhones. You wonder if it's obvious that the paperback in your hands isn't for any class. When you look up, Jiyong smiles at you over his Moleskine notebook.

\---

You end it on a Saturday. It's spring, leftover icicles dripping patterns onto the window. He's wearing an old yellow sweater. A vintage deadstock baseball cap hides his black hair.

"You don't give a shit about me," he says. "You never have."

You think about the dip in his spine you like to touch when he sleeps. It makes him squirm and mouth the pillow sometimes.

"You don't even care."

If he asked you to tell him something about yourself now, maybe you'd tell him you'd ruined his shoes on purpose.

"So fuck you."

When Jiyong wakes up, his face is never swollen. At least that's what you'd tell him, and he'd prod at his cheeks before scrunching his face up, pressing his sleep-smelly mouth to your own.

\---

In the fall leaves clog the arteries of the streets. You have a bike now, and spend one Friday winding through a fancy suburb at the end of the 'T' line.

The house on the corner's a colonial, white with green shutters. When you bike past it someone steps out with matching hair, so you stop.

Jiyong, your Ji, he gapes at you.

You push your furry hat back from your face and wave.

"What are you doing here?"

"Dentist appointment." You stare at him staring at you. "I like your sweater."

"My mom got it for me." He crosses his arms over two embroidered turkeys. "Thanksgiving tradition, not that you care."

"It wasn't an accident."

"What?" He frowns and takes two steps forward, one hand closing on the iron railing.

"Your shoes, the gray ones? I fucked them up."

"Why?"

"I've never had money." You look up at the house. "I guess I just...I don't know." Your hands are slippery on your bike handles. You surprise yourself by adding, "I miss you."

When he says nothing you ask, "is this your house?"

"My family's."

"My mom lives in Buffalo," you say. "My dad died when I was a kid. He taught me how to ride."

"Listen," he says, "I just went out to grab the newspaper, so..."

"Oh." You shouldn't have kept talking. "I'm uh. I'm sorry I kept you. It's next to the garage door."

He makes his way down the steps and picks the paper up by its bag. Then he turns back.

"I am sorry."

He twists the plastic around his fist. His eyes dart away.

"Not for keeping you, for the rest of it."

"I know what you meant."

"If I could," you insist, "I'd tell you everything." And it's true, even if you think your life isn't much, that it hasn't been much since he and his hair and his shoes and his breath on your cheek had wandered away. "Here," you say, and you dig out your wallet, pulling a wrinkled photograph from its depths.

He steps forward and takes it. Then he frowns. "Who's this?"

"Me."

Jiyong looks at the picture again. Then he looks at you.

"I was pretty fat when I was a kid." You set your bike against the fence. "When my friends get into fights with each other I just take that out and show it to them. They always laugh." When Jiyong cracks a smile, you add, "you can laugh too if you want."

He does. It isn't his full-body one that you love, but it's real, and when you move closer he doesn't back away. His mouth tastes like pumpkin pie and his hair still smells the same. His hands make for the sides of your jacket and slide down, under your t-shirt where it's warm. "Come inside," he whispers. "I'll take you home."

\---

"That's your dad," you say, and you know because Jiyong'd told you about his tortoiseshell glasses and his red corduroys with the lobsters on them. "That's your mom." She's the woman with the turbans you'd always thought Jiyong lied about. His sister, you can tell, is the one in the cable knit leggings and the smaller version of his grey shoes.

"I like your hat," she chirps, and when you pull it off she smiles. "Jiyong and I picked it for you together."

 

Later Mr. Kwon will cough. You'll glance up from your coffee cup to find him looking at you, his brows raised. "I've heard about you from my son," he'll say, "but tell me about yourself."

You will clear your throat, and then you'll begin.


End file.
